Grown Ups (film)

Grown Ups
Directed by	Dennis Dugan
Produced by	Jack Giarraputo Adam Sandler
Written by	Adam Sandler Fred Wolf
Starring	Adam Sandler Kevin James Chris Rock David Spade Rob Schneider
Music by	Rupert Gregson-Williams
Cinematography	Theo van de Sande
Editing by	Tom Costain
Studio	Happy Madison Productions Relativity Media
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	June 25, 2010 (2010-06-25)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$80 million[1]
Box office	$271,430,189[1]

Grown Ups is a 2010 American buddy comedy film directed by Dennis Dugan and written by Adam Sandler, who also stars in the film. Besides Sandler, the film also stars Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider. The film was produced by Sandler's production company Happy Madison Productions and was distributed by Columbia Pictures.^[2] Sandler, Rock, Schneider, and Spade all joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in the 1990–1991 season; supporting cast including Colin Quinn, Maya Rudolph, Tim Meadows and Norm Macdonald have also been SNL cast members.

Plot

In 1978, five childhood friends won their junior high school basketball championship. During their celebration at a rented lake house, the friends' coach, Buzzer (Blake Clark), encouraged them to live their lives in a similar way to how they played the game. The five friends had remained close friends up until their graduation and are separated in the present-day. Lenny Feder (Adam Sandler) is a high-powered Hollywood talent agent who is married to Roxanne Chase (Salma Hayek), a fashion designer, and has three children—one daughter Becky and two sons, Greg and Keith (Jake Goldberg and Cameron Boyce); his sons have become very spoiled much to his annoyance. Eric Lamonsoff (Kevin James) claims he is now a co-owner of a lawn furniture company, is married to Sally (Maria Bello) and has two children, Donna and Bean (Ada-Nicole Sanger and Morgan Gingerich). Much to Eric's chagrin, Bean continues to nurse on Sally. Kurt McKenzie (Chris Rock) is a stay-at-home father who is married to Deanne (Maya Rudolph), the primary breadwinner of the family, and has two kids, Andre and Charlotte (Nadji Jeter and China Anne McClain). Deanne is pregnant with another child and her mother (Ebony Jo-Ann) also lives with the family. Rob Hilliard (Rob Schneider) has been divorced three times and has daughters Jasmine, Amber, and Bridget (Madison Riley, Jamie Chung, and Ashley Loren^[3]) from those marriages. His current wife, Gloria (Joyce Van Patten), is 30 years older than him. Marcus Higgins (David Spade) is a lazy womanizer. All five friends regularly harass with each other in comedic fashion throughout the film: Lenny for being rich; Eric for being overweight; Kurt for being skinny and not being more useful; Rob for his way of saying "Maize!" and for having a much older wife; and Marcus for being a slacker.

When the five friends soon find out that Buzzer has died, they all reunite in three decades and later return to their hometown with their families to pay tribute to Buzzer at his private funeral. Lenny rents the lake house for the 4th of July weekend for his friends to stay at. However, Lenny cannot stay for the whole weekend because Roxanne has a fashion show in Milan. While at the lake house, Lenny is annoyed that their kids would rather play video games rather than spend time outdoors, so he and the other friends are forcing their kids to play outside during their stay. Eric has a small incident on a rope swing and injures a bird. At a local restaurant, Lenny talks to his old nemesis, Dickie Bailey (Colin Quinn), who is still upset at Lenny because he allegedly had his foot out of bounds when he made the long-ago game winning shot. Dickie challenges him and his friends to a rematch, but Lenny declines after noting that Dickie is decidedly out of shape. The next day, the five friends spread Buzzer's ashes into the woods. Rob becomes depressed during this event, lamenting his failed marriages, and later says his three daughters from the past marriages are coming. After having to deal with Jasmine, Rob goes and hangs out with his friends, who were fishing. After making some jokes on Rob, the others elect to cheer him up with a game of arrow roulette. Rob remains in the circle the longest, making him the winner, but the arrow impales Rob's foot. When Gloria tries to use a maize-covered poultice, Rob snaps at Gloria. Lenny's thrill of victory talking on cup-phones and Roxanne accidentally tells Becky that she is the "Tooth Fairy". Happy that they are enjoying the same kind of fun he had as a child, Lenny installs an extensive cup-phone network in the house.

Roxanne ultimately figures out that it is more important to stay at the lake house than going to Milan. The five friends go to a water park, where Bean learns to drink milk out of a carton and Marcus flirts constantly with Jasmine and Amber, having bought them skimpy bikinis. Rob assaults a ride attendant who insults Bridget for being less attractive than her sisters. Eric ignores Donna's warning about a chemical in the kiddie pool that turns urine blue, and chaos results when he urinates in the pool. The spouses try to attract a hunk, but he is laughed off due to his high-pitched voice. Later, Lenny and the group go to the zip line and meet Dickie again, this time with his own group of friends, including Wiley (Steve Buscemi), who ends up in the hospital after sliding down the zip line by his feet. Lenny teaches his son how to shoot a perfect shot during basketball. Afterwards, the friends end the night by sharing their dance with their spouses. The next day, Roxanne picks up Lenny's phone and confronts him on lying about canceling their flight trip before she agreed on staying for the family instead of going to Milan. Eventually, everyone starts to tell the truth about their feelings and lives. On their final day at the lake house, Lenny and his buddies are challenged once again to a basketball rematch by Dickie. At the game-deciding shot, Lenny purposely misses in order to allow Dickie and his team to win. Before the end of the film, Marcus plays another game of arrow roulette, this time with an entire crowd of people, and everyone takes off with Wiley accidentally getting his foot impaled by the arrow.

Cast

Production

Filming commenced in Southborough, Massachusetts on May 18, 2009, but most of the filming was done in Essex, Massachusetts, Water Wizz at Wareham, Massachusetts, as well as some scenes shot in Marblehead, Massachusetts on the exclusive Marblehead Neck.^[4] The restaurant scene takes place in Woodman's of Essex. The "lake house" and basketball scene at the end were filmed at Chebacco Lake in Essex, MA. However, many of the fly over shots of the lakes and islands were done at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, mostly in Tuftonboro, Melvin Village and Gilford. The film was scheduled to be released on July 1, 2010, but the production company moved it up to June 25, 2010.

Music

The score to Grown Ups was composed by Rupert Gregson-Williams, who recorded his score with a 55-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox.^[5]

Release

Box office

The film was a box office success grossing $162,001,186 in the United States and $109,429,003 in other countries, with a worldwide gross of $271,430,189.^[1] Happy with the gross, Adam Sandler showed his appreciation by buying brand-new Maserati sports cars for his four co-stars.^[6][7] The film won at the 2011 MTV Movie Awards for the "Best Line from a Movie" category, which it won for the line "I want to get chocolate wasted!", delivered by Becky, played by Alexys Nycole Sanchez.

Critical reception

The film was heavily panned by critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes give the film a score of 10% based on 162 reviews, with an average score of 3.3/10, and the site's consensus is: "Grown Ups' cast of comedy vets is amiable, but they're let down by poor direction and the scattershot, lowbrow humor of a stunted script."^[8] Metacritic awarded the film an average score of 30 out of 100 based on 32 reviews.^[9]

Awards

Rob Schneider was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor for the film, but lost the trophy to Jackson Rathbone for both The Last Airbender and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

Sequel

A sequel, titled Grown Ups 2, was released on July 12, 2013. Dennis Dugan, the director of the first film, returned as director. The main cast, including Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Maya Rudolph, Maria Bello and Steve Buscemi reprised their roles, except Rob Schneider. New cast includes Andy Samberg, Taylor Lautner and Patrick Schwarzenegger. The sequel follows Lenny Feder as he relocates his family back to the small town where he and his friends grew up.^[10] Much like its predecessor, Grown Ups 2 was heavily panned.

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Grown Ups (2010 film)

• Official website
• Grown Ups at the Internet Movie Database
• Grown Ups at Box Office Mojo
• Grown Ups at Rotten Tomatoes
• Grown Ups at Metacritic